Americas slowly decreasing, France on high alert, Germany turned around. Britain looks OK, but everybody thinks they are doing poorly. Tunisia could still turn bad. In other news, Spain has made some progress and almost all of Europe is in the yellow risk group with only a few specks of green left.
Note: I am no longer displaying the number of recovered people because they were very incomplete and incorrect, and because they do not really add to the picture.
Brazil's numbers are falling at a snail's pace and it has a long way to go before reaching a safe zone. Daily infections fell from 23 to 20.3 per 100K and keep trending down. On longer term, however, the downward trend will become almost flat. Daily deaths rose from 0.405 to 0.565 while keeping the downward trend. The map of new infections since Saturday showed few changes, . On top of that, contrary to all other countries and states in my blog, Brazil's numbers are predicted to fall for the next two months.
Outlook: Very Bad With Hope
U.S. minus CA,NY,WA: We see the same glacially slow decline of the numbers as in Brazil. At this pace, by the elections in November, daily infections will have fallen to 6 per 100K. While this will be not too shabby of a value, some states will still still deal with mich worse numbers and current protections from job loss and home eviction may no longer be in place.
Daily infections gave a little, from 14.9 to 14 per 100K, while keeping the trendline pointing downward, and daily deaths remained almost the same at 0.343. The risk map showed three states going red and one for the better and the R-value is 1. The worse R-value (1.35) is currently in South Dakota, a state that just turned red on the risk map.
Outlook: Very Bad With Hope
California can be content because numbers decline faster than the U.S. or in WA. It saw daily infections fall from 13.5 to 9.4 per 100K. Daily deaths fell from 0.481 to 0.215, pushing the trendline down to the slope seen in other states. The R-value remained way below 1 and the risk map showed more green and less red (yay!), although the same number of counties went from good to worse as the other way.
Outlook: Very Bad With Hope
Washington's case numbers came out of the weekend looking the same as before, which means they continue their good but slow path towards the bottom. Daily infections fell from 7.2 to 4.1 per 100K and daily deaths remained at 0.131, with unknown trajectory (still jumping around). This is the only worrisome value because the R-value remained below the critical value of 1 (at 0.92) and the risk map showed seven counties going for better and only one for worse.
Outlook: Bad With Hope
France: In spite of a decline, daily infection numbers remain still too high, as do the deaths and all other factors. Daily infections fell from 11 to 7.4 per 100K. Daily deaths went from 0.030 to 0.039, with potential to break out of this still-not-too-bad zone into a danger zone. The daily positive rate continued its 4-week increase to now 4.3%. The R-value remained at a very high 1.38, which is higher than any of the federal states of the U.S. The risk map is darker than four days ago with 6x more Départements going for the worse than going for the better.
Outlook: Bad
New York: Daily infections remain in the same, slowly declining, corridor with 3.9 per 100K. Daily death numbers remained at 0.015. So nothing much has been changing in weeks. The only sticky point is the risk map showing two counties in orange. Bad changes in Upstate New York will, however, buffered by the vast population in New York City and will thus have almost no effect on the total numbers.
Outlook: Satisfactory
United Kingdom: Numbers don't look too dramatic but everybody keeps talking about how poorly the government has handled the pandemic. So either these reports refer to the economic problems, which are intermingled with Brexit issues, or they refer to Johnson's chaos. Or the numbers are not correct. The latter still being a remote possibility given the problems of the past with number reporting.
Daily infections remained at 1.9 per 100K, trending up a tad more steeply. Daily deaths fell steeply from 0.013 to a very low 0.004. R-value and daily positive tests continued to look good.
Outlook: Satisfactory With Concern
Germany has clearly formed a second peak, which was much lower than the first one. School opening seem to not have the feared effect and fewer people are returning from abroad. The highest number of imported infections are still coming from families returning from Kosovo and Turkey, followed by holidaymakers.
Daily infections fell from 1.8 to 1.5 per 100K and trending up less steeply. The two dotted trendlines looking back two weeks and one month indicate that numbers should be falling even more in the next weeks. The daily death number increased from a very low 0.001 to 0.013, which is not worrisome and the same as in New York State. The R-value fell below 1 again and the risk map showed just a few more counties going for the worse than for the good,
I am planning a get-away in December. If current predictions will turn out to be true, we should see an increase by mid October, in which case I might not book a train ticket.
Outlook: Satisfactory With Concern
Tunisia looks as if it had passed its second peak. Daily infections rose from 1.2 to 1.4 per 100K but still trending up a little less steeply. The two-week trend looks even better and hints at a slower increase. New cases are in Ben Arous (a working class area south of the capital Tunis) and Gabès (still El Hamma), while the other regions see few new cases. Daily deaths rose from 0.009 to 0.026. While that seems a lot, it reflects only three deaths, none of which were young. The daily positive rate fell to 5.2%, which is a good sign.
Outlook: Satisfactory With Concern
There is new research that could help understand Covid-19 and offer existing drugs to combat the worse effects. I don't know if this is just fantasy but maybe something will come out of it.
Dr. Daniel Jacobson, lead researcher and chief scientist for computational systems biology at Oak Ridge offers the bradykinin hypothesis, which provides a model that explains many aspects of Covid-19, including some of its most bizarre symptoms. Jacobson's group published their results in a paper in the journal eLife in early July. There is an article about this in Medium.
According to the team's findings, a Covid-19 infection generally begins when the virus enters the body through ACE2 receptors in the nose. The virus then proceeds through the body, entering cells in other places where ACE2 is also present: the intestines, kidneys, and heart. This likely accounts for at least some of the disease's cardiac and GI symptoms. But once coronavirus has established itself in the body, it actively hijacks the body's own systems, tricking it into upregulating ACE2 receptors in places where they're usually expressed at low or medium levels, including the lungs.
Covid-19 is like a burglar who slips in your unlocked second-floor window and starts to ransack your house. Once inside, though, they don’t just take your stuff — they also throw open all your doors and windows so their accomplices can rush in and help pillage more efficiently.
The renin-angiotensin system (RAS) controls many aspects of the circulatory system, including the body's levels of a chemical called bradykinin, which normally helps to regulate blood pressure. The end result, the researchers say, is to release a bradykinin storm – a massive, runaway buildup of bradykinin in the body. According to the bradykinin hypothesis, it's this storm that is ultimately responsible for many of Covid-19's deadly effects.
Several drugs target aspects of the RAS and are already FDA-approved to treat other conditions. Interestingly, Jacobson’s team also suggests vitamin D as a potentially useful Covid-19 drug.
So, if we can't get numbers down to zero, there is some home that we can make the disease less threatening. I am taking vitamin D regularly throughout the winter anyway...